Eureka!!! They finally realized how pathetic stroke care was, you don't see any mention of the Joint Commission which should have been leading that charge. Get your hospital involved.
http://phys.org/wire-news/108992277/translation-of-research-into-practice-for-post-stroke-care-goes.html
Researcher-clinicians from the Regenstrief Institute, the Department
of Veterans Affairs and Indiana University School of Medicine are
leading a national effort to coordinate and organize acute stroke care
across the entire VA medical system. This initiative to improve
in-hospital management of stroke with the goal of reducing disability
and death was implemented by the VA this summer and may serve as a model
for public and private hospital systems around the country.
"This undertaking grew out of our research into evidence-practice
gaps in care, where we showed that the VA had high quality of post-acute
and discharge care for stroke, but some room for improvement in very
early stroke care," said Regenstrief Institute investigator Dawn
Bravata, M.D., clinical coordinator of the VA's Stroke Quality
Enhancement Research Initiative, or QUERI. She is a research scientist
with the Center of Excellence on Implementing Evidence-Based Practice at
the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis and
associate professor of medicine at the IU School of Medicine.
All VA facilities that treat stroke patients, no matter the size of
the unit or the number of hours per week when stroke care is available,
are affected. Coordination and organization of care doesn't mean stroke
care will be practiced identically at every facility. It does, however,
encourage more uniform quality according to Dr. Bravata. Stroke care
quality will initially be measured in three areas: administration of
thrombolytic clot dissolving drugs; screening for swallowing
difficulties; and use of the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale
to determine critical information about the severity of the stroke.
The specifics of the national quality initiative are tailored to the
type of facility and what works in each locality—from major medical
center to small facility. For example, screening for swallowing
difficulty will become part of standard care, but it is up to each
hospital to determine how that evaluation is done—perhaps by a nurse in
the emergency room or a speech pathologist on an inpatient hospital
unit.
"Improving stroke care and outcomes is a challenge as the population
ages and hospital systems expand. The VA's experience in stroke care
improvement can potentially be adapted to any health care system as a
model of how care improvements can be provided in a coordinated,
integrated fashion across different types of hospitals," said
Regenstrief Institute investigator Linda Williams, M.D., research
coordinator of the VA's Stroke QUERI. She is a research scientist with
the Center of Excellence on Implementing Evidence-Based Practice at the
Roudebush VAMC and associate professor of neurology at the IU School of
Medicine. "The VA has been doing a good job using research to better
inform how and where care improvements can be made. As health care is
increasingly provided by networks of multiple hospitals, this VA example
can be used to show how care improvements can be translated throughout
the system for the benefit of all patients."
Risk factors for stroke include older age, hypertension, high
cholesterol, smoking, physical inactivity and atrial fibrillation.
Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and also of long-term
disability in the United States. According to the National Institute of
Neurological Disorders and Stroke, more than 780,000 strokes occur
annually in the United States.
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